The Pact

Ana quit school, and it stirred things up here. The question that wouldn’t die was how much of your own life you actually get to decide when everyone has expectations about what you should do. I was sick with a cold when we drove to Memmingen—still am, really, cough hanging on—but we went to the career information center anyway so she could see what her options were.

She spent hours in there reading through job listings, watching physiotherapy career videos, pulling information about different paths. I did the same thing, trying to understand what different careers actually meant. Spent the rest of the time hacking their Google search page, which worked. So if you ever get trapped in a career center without real internet, I can help.

Then Ira and Daja met us and we went to Munich to make the most of those regional train tickets. While they were shopping, Ana and I sat in Hugendubel for three hours straight. She was going through books on nutrition and psychology—one of them was about someone who lived on sunlight for five years—and I grabbed the new Mac magazine, Steve Jobs’ biography, and a book about Mac culture. There’s a chapter about the iPod’s creation that stuck with me.

What happens with Ana now, whether she goes back to school or not, nobody really knows. With her it could be anything. But we made a deal. If I actually focus on my distance learning degree instead of letting it slide, she’ll finish hers. Fair trade. We agreed to it. I kept her awake last night with coughing and the next morning she was back in class, or at least she said she would be. Which with her is always something you watch and wait on.